Recent Acquisition
'The Way to Calvary'
before 1534
Polidoro da Caravaggio
(about 1499 - 1543)
NG6594
The National Gallery has recently acquired 'The Way to Calvary' by Polidoro da Caravaggio. The purchase was made possible by The Art Fund and the George Beaumont Group.
This deeply moving painting is a rare work by the least conventional of Raphael's pupils, one of the most brilliantly talented - yet still mysterious - artists working in Italy in the 16th century.
Unlike many of his Renaissance contemporaries, who found positions at the glamorous courts of northern Italy, Polidoro spent the majority of his career in Sicily, then under Spanish rule.
The island's history of devastating earthquakes means that archival sources on his life are scarce and his surviving paintings are often in poor condition. 'The Way to Calvary' is an extraordinary survival: well preserved and well documented, it is painted in a wild, expressive and original style, and is one of the earliest examples of an oil sketch in existence.
'The Way to Calvary' is one of three preparatory oil sketches for Polidoro's most important Sicilian commission, a monumental altarpiece of the same subject painted for the church of the Catalan brotherhood in Messina
The altarpiece was completed before 1534. It was carried aloft in a street procession, forming part of a moving Passion play, and was revered by the islanders as a kind of miraculous relic.
Oil on walnut 75.3 x 59.3 cm
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